To

such, to the formalities attendant upon the obtaining a license. people who wanted to be made of twain one, in a hurry, this gentleman was a special providence, though a dirty one, and a drunken.

It was suggested by one of Colonel C. C.'s London servants, that this reverend personage should be sent for, to carry into effect his (the colonel's) determination, with respect to Miss Portia and our hero. But are the couple-beggar's marriages valid? That was the only point on which Colonel C. C. desired to be satisfied.

"They are as walid, colonel," said the footman, "as if they wos celebriated by the Harchbishop of Canterbury, or Doctor Pusey hisself."

There was no going beyond that: the parson with the red nose and the dirty neckcloth was sent for; he came, and in an amazing short space of time (for the Reverend Mr. Smut read fast) Aunt Portia's name was Gullingsworth, and Mr. Julius was put past the power of mortal woman to jilt again. "She's very deep," was the thought that kept running round in the simple gentleman's soul all the time of the ceremony; "she's very deep. I can't see to the bottom of her; but it will all come right in the end." In fact, he expected every moment that the "readiness" for which Captain Dunham Browne had given her such unlimited credit would show itself, in giving the whole business some unexpected turn, and even after the ring was on her finger, and the priest had pronounced them man and wife, he believed that it was all a stratagem-a specimen of the lady's "depth;" and that it would end by sending him triumphant out of the hands of his enemies to pursue his views upon Arborea.

"Now, mister," said the colonel, when the ceremony was over; "do you live in London?"

Mr. Julius replied in the affirmative. "Well, you may walk home with your wife, unless you prefer calling a cab; but I'm more than afraid you won't find one at this hour. I say, mister, have you got any thing to live on?"

Mr. Julius mentioned the amount of his income.

"Do tell!" exclaimed the colonel, in some surprise. "Well, mister, I wish

you had come to run away with my daughter, instead of my sister; and Ĭ think you would have shown more taste, too. But every man to his own fancy."

Mr. and Mrs. Julius Gullingsworth were no sooner in the street, than the gentleman said to the lady

"Pray, ma'am, have you any idea where your niece, Miss Arborea Hardwood, is ?"

"I heard from her maid, dearest," said the lady to the gentleman; "that she heard the hall-door slam while every one was running to see what was the cause of the alarm at the lobby window, where you, dear naughty one, had come in; and I fear much she is gone off with a sad scape-grace-a certain Captain Dunham Brownewho has been on her heels every where of late; and to whom I have been sorry to see her show a marked preference."

"All's right," thought Mr. J. G.; "they're off before us; but Aunt Portia doesn't seem to know the friendly part Captain Dunham Browne is playing in the matter."

"And who gave the alarm of thieves, ma'am?" said Mr. Julius, aloud.

"It was Arborea's maid, love," answered Mrs. Julius.

"Odd, again," thought the hero of these pages.

66

Well, ma'am," spake he again; "we have nothing for it now, but to make ole the haste to Gretna we possibly can."

"To Gretna, Julius, sweetest! surely you and I, of all people in the world, have the least need to go to Gretna!"

"Why, you don't mean to say we're merried in earnest ?"

"Of course we are, my own life. How strange you are, Julius. course we are married in earnest."

Of

"Then Dunham Browne's a humbug; and you, madam, are not half so deep as I took you to be."

"Please sir,” said D 90, pausing for a moment as he lounged past the happy couple, "I wos wery partic'l'y charged by that 'ere gen'l'm'n as come with you in the po-shay, to mention that his-self and the lady vishes you the comp❜nts off the season, and a great many 'appy returns."

Ir is among the distinctions of our age, and perhaps country, that the aristocracy of genius and that of station are found so frequently to coincide. Our "hereditary legislators," as they have been in mockery styled, vindicate, day after day, the wisdom which has separated them as a distinct order, giving frequent and conclusive proofs that their excellent gifts or meritorious exertions would have achieved eminence for them, had not the arrangements of society anticipated, as it were, their successes, and given them a name before personal merit had made them famous. good thing to see the command which appoints man to labour thus signally acknowledged, and to see the obedience which seemed yielded by will rather than enforced of obvious necessity, so graciously rewarded.

It is a

In a

democratic and an inquiring age it is much that the matchless telescope, which has attracted, almost as much as it has assisted, observation, should have been a contribution of the British peerage to the noblest of our natural sciences; and it is much, that, as we firmly believe, in the contribution to a description of which this article is dedicated, a better than human philosophy will find an instrument not less available for great results, than astronomy has found in its most powerful telescope.

It is not our purpose, nor would it, perhaps, properly fall within our province, to consider "The Times of Daniel," as a work designed to aid in the elucidation of prophecy. This, no doubt, is the intention of the work, and it is an injustice to its merit to regard it in any humbler rank among human performances. Its merits as conducive to an explanation of prophecy will, however, we are sure, receive in due time their proper estimate. Already they have attracted the attention of foreign scholars and students. They will have their reward, and can well afford to be postponed while we consult for the character of our own work rather than for that

of the noble author whose volume lies before us, and endeavour to make intelligible to the reader the discovery which the Times of Daniel has proclaimed, and the argument which distinguishes the discovery from hypothesis and conjecture.

The great principle asserted, and, we would say, established, in this valuable work, is, that the chronology of the Holy Scriptures is exact and true, and that there is evidence by which it is clearly ascertainable. It follows as a natural consequence, that if there be apparent discrepancy between profane and sacred history, the error must be on the side of the former, and the attempt to bring Scripture into accommodation with it can be productive only of bewilderment and confusion. In the argument by which these points are established there is evidence of very deep research, and there is an air and a reality of candour in the conduct of the controversy which cannot be too highly commended. At the same time, it must be confessed, these great merits have something like a counterbalancing disadvantage. In considering all objections, actual and possible, to his scheme, the noble author enumerates and replies to many with which the generality of his readers in all probability would never have been troubled. The continuity of the reasoning is thus occasionally interrupted, where interruption was, perhaps, unnecessary, certainly undesirable, and the candour and the learning for which the reader, who has mastered the argument, feels deeply thankful, increase, very se. riously, his difficulty while prosecuting his task as a student.

For this reason it may be not inexpedient to lay before the reader an outline of his grace's scheme, and in doing so to enter briefly into a notice of matters which may be thought not to come directly within the scope of a periodical like ours.

It is, we believe, an acknowledged fact that a prophecy among the most

VOL. XXVII.-No. 160.

2 L

Another very remarkable corroboration of this latter portion of sacred history, the Duke of Manchester has, with the honest ingenuity characteristic of his whole work, discovered and established. It is the evidence of three Jubilees between the reign of Hezekiah, in which the ten tribes were led into captivity, and the fourteenth year of the desolations. This would establish the fact, that the portion of time in which Judah existed, after the leading into captivity of Israel, to the fourteenth year of the desolations, must have exceeded, or, at least, equalled one hundred years, and thus confirms the argument derived from the aggregate amount of the whole interval between the dedication and destruction of the temple, while it is itself corroborated by the reigns of the kings of Judah examined in detail.

The various proofs which thus conspire to establish the faithfulness of Scripture chronology are, it may be supposed, strong reasons for adhering to a system which might seem sufficiently evidenced by its own authority. And yet commentators have not respected it. Impatient of difficulties, real or fancied, they have, with but little reverence for the text of Scripture, dealt with it as the necessity of the moment seemed to require, and altered the Divine Word into conformity with pagan history. A single instance is all that we can afford of this abuse of our scriptural privileges; but we think the one example will be abundantly sufficient. We take it not from one whose indifference to things holy might have rendered the licen tiousness of his emendations intelligible, but from a writer whose genuine piety was no less conspicuous than his great and varied learning-one of whom our University may well have felt proud, and whose religious life and walk were known on earth, and we believe had a heavenly light upon them. We speak

of the venerable Doctor Hales, who, in his Analysis of Chronology, thus disposes of dates which he found clearly set down in Scripture:—

"We are now competent to detect some errors that have crept into the correspondence of reigns; and which have hitherto puzzled and perplexed chronologers, and preventing them from critically harmonizing the two seriesnot being able to distinguish the genuine from the spurious numbers.

"1. Jehosaphat began to reign over Judah in the fourth year of Ahab.1 Kings xxi. 41. It should be the second.

"2. Ahaziah, the son of Ahab, began to reign over Israel in the seventeenth of Jehoshaphat.-1 Kings xxii. 51. It should be the twentieth of Jehoshaphat.

"3. Jehoram, the son of Ahaziah, began to reign over Israel in the second year of Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat.2 Kings i. 17. It should be the twentysecond year of Jehoshaphat; as also where it is again incorrectly stated in the eighteenth.'-2 Kings iii. 1.

"4. Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat, began to reign over Judah in the fifth year of the reign of Joram, the (grand) It son of Ahab.-2 Kings viii. 16. should be the fifth year from the death of Ahab, or the third year of Joram's reign. Jehoshaphat being then King of Judah is an anachronism and an interpolation in the Mazorete text.

5. Jehoash began to reign over Israel in the thirty-seventh year of Joash, King of Judah.-2 Kings xiii. 10. It should be the thirty-ninth year; as in the accurate Aldine edition of the Greek Septuagint. See Jackson's Chron.

Book V. p. 182.

"6. The correspondences by which the interregnum in Judah was collected are incorrect. They should be 25-14-11 years.

"7. Hoshea slew Pekah, King of Israel, in the twentieth year of Jotham. -2 Kings xv. 20. But Jotham reigned only sixteen years.-xv. 33. It should be in the third year of Ahaz, as collected from xvi. 1. (Analysis of Chron. Vol. II. p. 375.)"

Here is a specimen of the changes enterprised in the Chronology of Scripture, and with no better warrant than that they are necessary, in order to effect an accommodation between sacred history and profane. It seems, at first thought, rather difficult to understand why this process of alteration was not tried on the narratives of confessedly inferior authority.

The explanation will probably be found in the respect not unreasonably entertained for the authority of the "Astronomical Canon." The idea that the names of monarchs and the times of their accession to the throne are as clearly ascertained as the dates of certain eclipses, disposes many a mind to acquiesce in the chronology of profane history with a submission not warranted, perhaps, by the nature of the evidence. It may be indisputably true that eclipses occurred in the order in which astronomers have

recorded or arranged them. If there be a mistake in the record, it may be corrected. The conclusions of science may be infallibly certain as to the time and the manner in which the heavenly phenomenon presented itself; but there can be no such certainty as to the mundane history which the eclipse signalises. If the name of a monarch, the date of his accession to a throne, or his acquisition of an empire, has been incorrectly set down, through inadvertence or design, science has no power to remedy the evil; and for the reigns intermediate between those in which eclipses were observed it is manifest that the evidence must be purely historical, and can only impart that degree of assurance which results from an examination of probable testimony.

66 The astronomical canon," observes the Duke of Manchester, "is, perhaps, my most formidable adversary. I do not, however, mean to undervalue the evidence from astronomy. The very revelation which I desire to uphold tells us that the heavenly bodies were "for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years ;" and it would be weak to attempt exalting the revelation by the Divine Word at the expense of depreciating the manifestation of the heavenly bodies. Yet, without impeaching the veracity of the author, we may discriminate between that which is comparatively certain and that which is only highly probable. The historical facts immediately connected with astronomical phenomena are of a different grade of evidence from the events introduced into the canon by authority derived solely from history. But the astronomical DATA from which the canon was formed were very few, as will be seen by the accompanying table:

which we find in this part of the canon, only four are mentioned in connexion with the eclipses; out of 260 years, only five dates-and of these only one marks the commencement, while the other four refer to neither the beginning nor ending of a reign.

"Now, there may be various grounds of uncertainty. Take, for example, one of these dates:- In the seventh of Cambyses, on the 17th of Pharmenoth, an hour before midnight, the moon was eclipsed half a diameter on the northern limb.' Be it granted that from this record it can be proved that the seventh of Cambyses was the 16th of July, B.C. 523, it may be equally certain, because established upon the same grounds, that the eclipse of the twentieth of Darius was November 19th, B.C. 502: but that the Cyrus of the canon is the Coresch of Scripture, and that he preceded the Cambyses in whose reign the eclipse was observed, is not an astronomical certainty, but only an historical probability: for there are no astronomical phenomena recorded in connexion with the reign of Cyrus.

"Again, because there was an observation in the twentieth of Darius, to assume that the son of Hystaspes reigned IN BABYLON for the nineteen previous years, is only inference, and not evidence; for he might have reigned only in Media or Persia, and his reign have dated from his ascending the throne of Persia, and not from the time when he possessed himself of Babylon-nay, I should say that, unless it can be proved that no other eclipses were visible at Babylon during the previous nineteen years, the presumption is that Darius was not reigning there, else the earlier eclipses in connexion with this reign would have been recorded. I should think probable that, when an eclipse is recorded near the commencement of a reign, it is to mark that event; but when near the middle or close of a reign, as the twentieth or thirty-first of Darius, it is to mark some revolu tion or some other remarkable event.

"Again, to say that the Nebopolassar of the canon is the Nebuchadnezzar of Scripture, is only plausible conjec

ture.